


What Could Be

by Kedreeva



Series: The Unspoken [2]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Nuke (Haven), Poker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short expansion on Nathan and Duke's poker game evening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Could Be

They’re eight hands into their poker game full of counterfeit money when “Do you ever think about what might have happened if I hadn’t left?” falls out of Duke’s mouth instead of ‘fold.’ He doesn’t take it back once he’s said it.

Nathan’s gaze flicks up, snags on Duke’s, and he doesn’t look away again. “You did leave.” In the flat, dullness of the words, Duke can hear the distance being a cop affords Nathan. Duke wonders how long it took to get that far away from the truth, far enough it didn’t hurt anymore.

Duke drops eye contact first, picking at his cards. He doesn’t really see any of them. “There wasn’t anything for me here.” Nathan had left two years before Duke, but they never talk about that. They never talk about the two lonely years Duke spent scraping by hustling cards and running errands while Nathan was away at college.

He can still feel Nathan’s heavy gaze upon him. “And out there? Did you find  _anything_  out there?”

That’s the irony of it, Duke thinks. Of course he hadn’t. He’d left to travel around the whole world in an attempt to find something he’d given up by leaving. “I came back, didn’t I?”

Nathan doesn’t say anything to that, but Duke’s not sure there’s anything to say. So he folds his cards and leaves the deck to Nathan to shuffle while he fetches another pair of bottles. He wonders if they should switch to shots. He doesn’t think it will help.

“I do,” Nathan says three hands and half a beer later. He doesn’t look up but Duke’s confusion shows in his silence. “I do think about it all the time.”

Duke waits until Nathan looks up before he raises his eyebrows to ask for more.

“You shouldn’t have left.” There’s less venom now than there was two years ago. Duke counts that as a plus. It still hurts.

“You’re right,” he says, and at least that gets him Nathan’s full attention.

Nathan just looks at him and Duke wonders what he sees these days. They aren’t enemies anymore, haven’t been since Audrey set foot in their sandbox and forced them to start playing nice. They aren’t friends either; that ended the first time Nathan kissed him under the bleachers in high school, drunk and sleepy and content with whatever ounce of happiness the two of them had managed to carve out of their lives for themselves. And they haven’t had even that since Nathan took the Bronco to college and left Duke alone in Haven.

In the end, Nathan just sighs and lays his cards on the table, picks up his beer instead. “Sometimes I think about what happens if you stay.”

“And?” Duke asks softly, not sure he wants an answer.

Nathan  _looks_  at him again, searching, open, and takes a drink from his bottle. “Guess you’ll have to stay and find out. Deal.”

Duke rolls his eyes to hide his smile and collects Nathan’s cards for another round. And he thinks, as he watches Nathan watch him shuffle, that maybe things will be better this time.


End file.
